ABSTRACT
In the course of recent decades, the general importance of communication in political life has become fully recognized. In an interesting manner, this recognition has been associated with the analysis of the role of groups: thus ‘group theory’ can be said to have been at the origin of the study of communication. ‘It became clear to Bentley [the originator of group theory] that society and politics were indeed processes and that the central phenomenon of social process was communication’ (Nimmo and Sanders, 1981: 49). We have now become fully aware of the fact that no operation of the political system can take place unless each part of the system communicates with the others; more specifically, there are operations in the political system only to the extent that there is communication among the various parts. This is true both within groups - which are communication mechanisms among members — and among groups. Indeed, communication also links the present with the past and the future, so that demands are followed by policies.
